I remember hangin’ around in Skip Frye’s shop, watchin’ him shape a board, and I said,“You don’t wear a mask?” his response was, “Sometimes… but it’s all particulate matter, so it’s goin’ to come out the other end eventually!” We laughed, and he went right on shaping… then I thought about Diff and others who have died at a relatively early age compared to our human longevity, and wondered if there might be any correlation… I guess only time will tell.
This is one of the things we want to determine. You can do particulate sampling where you use a system that will separate out only the respirable dust, that is dust that that is smaller than 10 microns. This is the stuff that gets deposited in the alveoli rather than getting removed in your phlegm or turning into white boogers. Compare that to a sample taken at the same time that doesn’t separate at out the small stuff and you get the respirable fraction. I would be interested to see how the respirable fraction varies with planing versus using something like an AkuShape.